During the last 30 years Action Art
has found fertile fields of confluence between the experimentation about
vision and gesture and poetic- visual sound dramaturgy. A large space of this
research has been characterized by the connection of Performance Art with the
arguments connected to the poetics of the “total poetry” and by the development
of the performance technologies in a technological key. In reality this kind of
artistic research appears at the beginning of the 20th century and it
goes through the whole century. Both in a practical way and theoretically, the
succession of artistic events based on the use of the body as a dynamic entity,
with a strong aesthetic tension and a great impact on the viewer, has deeply
influenced different fields of experimentation beyond the institutional
categories of show and artistic genres disciplines. Nowadays Action Art and
Performance go around the world overcoming geographical and linguistic bounds,
they put into practise the contamination and fusion of languages, artistic
technologies, genres, existential dimension and ways of life. As Giovanni
Fontana writes: “ with “interdisciplinarity” the figure of the versatile artist
-(the “polyartist”)-takes shape, a person who can play his cards right between
poetry and cinema, theatre and music, dance and visual arts”. In the last
decades, thanks to the conviction that the contemporaneous use of different
medias and interdisciplinary exercise represents a central point in
contemporaneous artistic languages, you can attend the transformation in Action
of all the arts. For a reality that has by now become part of the history of
art, we thought it would be right to carry out in the City of Monza an
international Festival “Action Art - Harta Performing Monza” as a moment of
comparison of the new arts as a reference point and cultural exchange.

Harta Performing Monza

Nicola
Frangione was born in Forenza (PZ), Italy, in 1953. He has been living and
working in Monza since 1972, as an interdisciplinary artist experimenting
with several techniques: visual arts, publishing graphic arts, music and
sound poetry, video and theatre production, visual poetry and mail art.

As
well as being concerned with visual poetry, he is among the main mail
artists in Italy. For about 20 years he has been playing a role in
developing and spreading this art in Italy, carrying out projects and
organizing itinerant exhibitions and workshops.

He
has published and produced several art books: the poetry magazine
“Armadio e Officina” (since 1975); the book “Osservazioni critiche
sulla funzione del nervo ottico nella semiotica dell’arte” (1977); the
book “The relativity of language as the enigma of art” (1979); “Zen
and Art” and “Snapshot” (1980); “Madame et Theatre” (1987). From
1987 to 1995 he directed the publication of the cultural dynamics magazine
“Harta” and managed the multimedia art centre, “Osaon”, Milan, in
tandem with Luigi Bianco. Since 1996 he has been co-ordinating “edizioni
Harta Performing”, concerning Italian performing arts

Research
on music and sound poetry has resulted in several records and CDs: “Mail
Music” (LP, 1983); “Italic Environments” (LP, 1985, edizioni Armadio
Officina); “Radio Art” (CD, 1997); “Rapporti orali e trasversalità
sonore” (CD, 1999). Some of his sound works have been broadcast by
national radio stations in: Holland, Sweden, Spain, the USA, Canada, Japan
and Italy (RAI uno and RAI tre).

He
relies on his performances and theatre to take part in numerous
international shows and festivals. Some
of his latest itinerant works include: “Percorsi attraverso percorsi”,
“Italic Environments”, “Allitterazioni Sonore”, “Rapporti orali
e trasversalità sonore”.

“Comerson”,
videoinstallations

(versions
01- 02- 03- 04)

COMERSON
means a videoinstallation connected with a clear-cut relationship between a work of art environmental area and poetic intermediality. The body, light, space and time are the constants where the spectator/user achieves “modelling”, thus becoming
an integral part of the work in real time. A videoinstallation where technology and poor materials harmonize with each
other, to restore the multimedia poetic language to its proper simplicity, where video time goes by, while the work remains. Video technology does
not record all the gestures of the audience; it sends them immediately, as they are filmed by 10 IR videocameras, which send the images to as many
TV-sets enclosed by metal cages. Therefore, in COMERSON the spectator watches himself or herself as an integral part,
as a “coming child”, entering the path of the installation, giving his or her own image, showing himself or herself. Every corner of the installation is shot, and the spectator can go out of the
frame at any time; however, these movements will cause him or her to enter the next frame; he or she cannot escape his or her role as main character
of the work. To sum up: it might look like a game, where you move to avoid being put in a
cage; actually, the 10 TV-sets enclosed by the 10 metal cages are all that is caged.
The spectator thus becomes a key player within dynamic space, with his or her
“ego” and “out of his or her ego”.

FOTO

“Paths
through paths – italic environments”

performances

The
performer relies on minimal gestures, making the need for poetics beyond
pages both visible and audible.

Musicality
as the name for “writing gestures” becomes part and parcel of
environmental paths, according to rhythmic trajectories. Gestures develop
into meanings beyond the voice; the performer makes scores which stand out
as conceptually emotional.

The
adult meets his or her ego, within the container of old, common memories.
A tactile desire where everything is joined together: the rhythm of the
body, the risk of playing.

This
“show” results from the need to investigate the various dimensions of
“talking” man, visualizing them, through a symbolic language and a
structure which draws on two narrative lines to produce one ritual path,
remarkable existential spirituality, a sort of intensely enjoyed
experience crossing any “seams” and secrets concerning objects loaded
with transcendency and poetic intimacy.

The
core of the work – that is, the need to match different human components
with a view to achieving overall balance – has allowed scenic action to
develop horizontally: the performer transits and stops between sound
scenery and gestual script, thus resulting in overall poetry.

FOTO

“Rapporti
Orali e Trasversalità Sonore”

sound
poetry performance

Nicola
Frangione’s sound poetry and concerts are oriented towards what some
artists define as “art dramaturgy”. Gestures as a key form of
expression are a distinguishing feature of his work. On the one hand, his
vocality takes an active part in the performances of the body, playing the
same role as the other linguistic elements; on the other, it stands out
thoroughly, in a sound-focused dimension connected with both texts and
music according to interdisciplinary approaches, harmonizing with the main
orientation of “sound poetry”, which is the name for half a century’s
practice and pragmatic observation.

In
1980 Nicola Frangione began some projects – the first was called
“vocecevovoce” – based on the synergetic use of texts and music:
these elements are not designed to provide “spectacularity” only; they
support each other with a view to “revealing” voice, showing it “creatively”,
emphasizing sound and its significance. “Sound poetry” is involved,
being the name for a sound-focused event understood as an art object,
where texts, voice and music blend.

Therefore,
in Nicola Frangione’s sound poetry, technical specifications are
extended and broken through. His work goes beyond art production. At the
same time, you can find “comprehensive speech” in it, capable of
telling about itself and being looked at, thus becoming synonymous with
architecture, visual construction as well as sound and figurative echoes
of poetic tension, to aim for broader horizons.

“Competitions with clothes serving as reflected shields break out,
competitions with bows drawn at the breasts of the betrayed break out, the
last weep”. Dedicated to all interpersonal meetings/clashes,
performances where the spoken language changes into a nothing-focused
competition, where subjects or competitors are no longer important,
although they are still “masks of
the show, trousers on steps, in the final the defeated breath in the hands”.

After
the competition everything starts again, in the same way. “Nothing
has happened, there is always a referee who blows for the start and the
end of the competition, while others will state the lowest prices.”

“Ittoosang”
4.16

The
score concerns only the listener, who is requested to keep to the
following instructions:

(A)-Listen
to the piece standing for 4.12 minutes. (B)-The feet should wear only
shoes. (C)-The shoes may be of any shape. (D)-Stay in the middle of the
room. (E)-In the middle you can move as you like. (F)-For pleasure’s
sake you can avoid following these instructions.

This
piece is dedicated to all hunters and preys of the new economy. Let us say
to all of them: “ITTOOSANG!”
(an old exclamation, used in some regions of southern Italy, namely
between Naples and Foggia). It means: Throw
your blood! Go to die!).

“The prey became a hunter and escaped from itself, the thought met the
idea and flew away, the thought met the prey, became a hunter and, out of
itself, flew away, the thought with the idea met poetry, the hunter
escaped and the prey out of itself flew away. ITTOOSANG!”.

Instructions
are always useful for those who write them, while they are hardly useful
for those who follow them.

“Pin-occhio
al ticket” 1.31

Pinocchio,
the mythical character of a story by Collodi for a minute’s adultery:
“Pinn...occhio! Watch out for the ticket, because every utopian way has
its own Pinocchio, because every Pinocchio pays for its dream, because
every way costs you what you do not give, because every gift knows the
ticket, watch out! Pinn… loving the fairy, because time flows by and the
interval takes delight.” Dedicated to all grown-up true lies.

“vocecevovoce”
5.39

Sound
alliterations of the word “voce”
(voice); while poetry is bouncing, the poet is jumping).

“bassa
marea” 4.15

In
1984 “bassa marea” was actually recorded. The sound of water refers to
a short recorded piece, about 7-8 cm approaching the shore. After being
stored for several years, in 1999 the recording was processed, unused
concretism being part of visual memory, as it was replaced with an ant
capable of swimming in my mouth. “An uncatchable wave for one being, not an immense one, not an empty one,
not fraught with dread, though similar. Falling on the threshold to
remember everything, being frightened within to remember everything,
watering the grass of the single interval, dissolving the sweet taste of
the insect on the tree. Looking beyond to remember nothing.”

“Performing
Art e Utopia Concreta”

beyond
multimediality

Nowadays,
as in the past, we are aware that “art” performers, including the
keenest, find it hard to prescind from the models and materials that make
up their work; the characteristics and disciplines of the various forms of
expressions are often constrained, as their projects evolve within art
objects.

In
music, as in visual arts, in theatre as in poetry, purpose-designed media
have urged artists to become committed to corporative self-defence, on the
basis of a manneristic approach – that is, dramatic identification.
Media, disciplines and techniques develop – as the result of an attitude
carried to extremes – into “philosophical truths” related to
existential identification, like an eternal, immutable mother who is
willing to answer the human need for changes.

A
performance means just attributing the knowledge of one’s own
experimentation to the medium, ‘unmarried’, performative
transferability, where the artist is involved in his or her own work as
well as in overall action, dialectics harmonizing with critics; to sum up:
poetic detachment where form is duly taken into account, although it is
not exalted.

Within
the design-related process, for thirty years multimediality has been
connected with critical/operating research, making new technologies and,
consequently, new media feasible; nevertheless, it has not done away with
experiments closely related to “amazing appearances”; it has often
resulted in art forms technically similar to each other. Such uniformity
epitomizes the opportunity to connect technical/practical know-how with
art-related, ideational know-how on the same aesthetic level.

Although
technology allows the artist to rely on increased opportunities, new
“amazing appearances” come out again; freed from any critical
relationship, it causes the medium to look morbid in a different way, as
if it were the name for a new ideology, while being aware of its
programmatic limits in both space and time.

The
eternal process of “putting to death” stands out, an attempt to
provide the art world with clear-cut certainties unrelated to one’s
memory, unpredictability as lacking risk ethics, a type of modernity where
nobody falls, nobody gets hurt, but everybody can quickly become connected
with an immature world which puts itself in an unfavourable position as
early as tomorrow, as the result of the latest technologies as synonymous
with opportunities, possibilities, interactivity, virtuality and
multisensorial factors.

In
my opinion, expressive media should no longer be distinguished from
technology. You just have to look at the media, to realize that they mean
the sum of extremely useful functions in terms of both comfort and
spectacularization. Nevertheless, we are witnessing perceptive
polarization among artists (odourless), as if abstract personalization
were involved, an artist who is looking forward to new technological
updates, forgetting any circumstances connected with old delight, where
life time prevailed over production time.

The
artist goes beyond multimediality, in a detached way, if art is to be
understood dramatically and “performing art” is to be produced; the
work means the artist as the name for interdisciplinary synergy; the
artist belongs to common memories as sole maker of his or her own artistic
process; a performance means a course running between the language/conceptuality
and emotionality/impulsiveness, as thought/action.

Whereas
technology as related to more general factors tends to amaze both
consumers, who are often unaware of technical mechanisms, and artists, who
are aware of the medium but are tied to the growth and causality of the
latest finds. The capability of new technologies to deceive the central
nervous system results in two sellers who do not know each other, two
buyers who get to know each other as consumers interacting within a new,
exclusive game which has a major impact. If synthetic space is also
synonymous with real space, man will be the maker and the one responsible
for his own control. Art understood as “comprehensive dramaturgy”
arises from the individual’s virtuous existential characteristic, and
the performance may contain both “itself” and “what lies out of
itself”.

“Performing
art” may develop in parallel with technical know-how and experimentation
with languages. However, a sign – a foreign one, an extroverted energy
connected with “amazing appearances” – always prevails, whether the
body is there or not. Although the performer may be steadily pursuing new
experiences and languages in his or her project, he or she will rely on
the “rebellious”, psychological action of reaction as art of life.

“The
origin is the goal, because I look at you when you are aware of it”.

According
to this short phrase, utopia is real rather than abstract; what is more,
real utopia is the mainstay of the “extra-action” of the performer, as
traveller of first an inner world and than an outer one; he or she does
not depend on any disciplines, techniques or definitions. A performance
always epitomizes an original character connected with drama though not
with theatre; initially, it takes place in the awareness of one’s
existence; later, as a synthesis, it is “put into the field”. The
scope of action is changed as the result of inner originality, and the
performance translates into a delivery, a birth, an existential event
involving “bringing something into the world”, because in all that
happens during the performances we acknowledge ourselves as
anthropologically lively within the contents.